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The Stories Behind the Songs on This Single
Fri., Mar. 22. 2024 3:27pm EDT
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our sixth single of 2024:
COME AND GET CURED OF
I got the title for "Come and Get Cured Of" on October 30, 2023, and that single phrase covered the choruses and bridge, too ... but I didn't start writing the verses until March 7, 2024. I knew it would be an appeal to come to Jesus, but I wasn't sure whether to write within the framework of a story from the Gospels or in the context of today's world.
Also, exactly what is the listener being told to come and get cured of? Sin? Sickness? Addiction? Anxiety? Well, Jesus can do it all, and that's one of the reasons I like the open-ended title, though some smooth grammarians might not like it ending in a preposition. However, Merriam-Webster says the following:
"Ending a sentence with a preposition (such as with, of, and to) is permissible in the English language. It seems that the idea that this should be avoided originated with writers Joshua Poole and John Dryden, who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong."
When it came to curing, Jesus seemed to think treating a person's sin condition called for the most urgency, and He likened himself to a doctor in regard to that: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick ... For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:12-13).
However, the prime passage for this parody is something else Jesus said two chapters later: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).
ALMIGHTY GOD WON'T DIE
Before committing to write "Almighty God Won't Die," I considered a number of different themes and possibilities for this parody, including "The Night the Gospel Died," "The Night the Prophet Died," "The Nice Apostle Died," "That I Should Not Go Die," "That/Then I Should Call On Christ," "That I Should Not Go Die," "Do Not Succumb, Don't Die," "Do Not Succumb to Pride," etc.
If you haven't heard our final recording the whole way through, you might like some of those ideas better, but a parody is much more than a title — it has to work within the confines of the rest of the song's structure and rhyme scheme — and the phrase "Almighty God won't die" is only used at the end of the song anyway. As the new words for the intro, verses, and full choruses started coming to me at warp speed, they left no doubt in my mind that this was the way to go.
The lyrics allude to two famous statements. The first is: "God is dead" ("Gott ist tot") by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, something he wrote multiple times, beginning in 1882.
The second is a quote from Beatle John Lennon in 1966: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
As it turns out, I disagree with both Nietzsche and Lennon. Go figure. Go listen.
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